Children's Play

Grade One students at Concordia participated in a Social Studies unit entitled The Past and Present. The visual arts provide an historical record so it is easy for students to see how art records the passage of time. In other words, art creates a time capsule of cultural traits and events such as clothes, habits, and in our case - for games and toys!

To provide historical context, the students studied the work of a Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painter, Pieter Bruegel, The Elder. Specifically, they examined a piece of artwork named, Children’s Games. In this large oil painting, Bruegel includes over 250 children at play. Children can be seen playing over 80 different games such as leapfrog, hobby horse, dolls, rolling hoops, and spinning tops.

Students used the painting as inspiration for the design of their own toy. They talked about some of the games that children played in the past and decided on what they would create. Students decided on the type of toy they would make and what materials they would use. Then they went into a phase of prototyping the toy and figuring out how to make it work. At the end of the project, students were able to share their toy creations from the past as well as have a chance to play with each other’s games.